It is not hard to see how multimodal, exemplar, and prototype characteristics of concepts can be
supported by neural populations. A concept does not have to involve activation in just one neural
population in an isolated area of the brain restricted to language processing. A concept can be
multimodal in that it involves multiple neural populations, including ones dedicated to sensory
representations. The psychologist Larry Barsalou reviews evidence that your concept of a car, for
example, is distributed across areas of the brain that include ones primarily concerned with visual
representations. Hence the mental pictures that you can make of cars may be part of your concept, as
may be the sounds and smells that you associate with cars. Concepts are patterns of activation in
neural populations that can include ones that are produced by, and maintain some of the structure of,
perceptual inputs.